show me how to be whole again
by secretmachines
Summary: title's inspired by linkin park's new song, castle of glass - just happens that i was listening to this when i wrote the story hehe. a one-shot of reid bits of everyone else inside, but mostly morgan. no slash, just some reid whumpage. rated K for mild language. honestly if i didn't remember wrongly, the most bad-ass word you'll find here is "sh*t" :)


*author's note: hey there! it's my first time submitting a story! i guess coming here and reading all the fantastic stories kindda tempted me to create a lil piece of reid myself. this is just a little something that came to mind, i don't usually like portraying diana in such a bad light, but it seemed appropriate for this story - please don't go all harsh on me, dear readers :) lemme know if you like it & comments are greatly appreciated, i'll continue the series if i can find the time/ reviews are encouraging :) thanks for reading!

"Freshly baked cookies for my fine furry friends!" Garcia said cheerfully as she pushed open the glass doors into the BAU, a place she calls home.

Morgan practically leapt up to her and picked one up the tray with his mouth, "de-lishhh baby girl". Garcia slapped his hands lightly when he tried to get another one.

"One each. Only." Garcia tried to sound stern. JJ, Prentis and Rossi all helped themselves to her cookies.

"These go great with coffee, Penelope, thank you," Rossi said, raising his cup of joe in appreciation.

At the other end of the room, Reid pretended to be too engrossed in the book he is reading to notice all the fuss over the cookies.

"Here you go pretty boy don't assume I forgot about you because you've got your nose miles deep in some book" Reid looked up and forced a smile, thinking to himself that he can just accept it graciously and not eat it — he hates wasting food but he has no choice — but with Garcia staring at him intently, waiting for a verdict, he had to take a bite.

The cookie felt like sand crumbling in his mouth. His throat went dry and as he swallowed it felt like he was swallowing needles.

"They… are… um… awesome… thank you Garcia. You know there are perfect recipes for baking cookies, which is basically a complex algorithm involving a ratio of thickness of each dough to the conductivity of the metal baking plate…" whether he is getting too good at controlling his micro expressions that Garcia did not catch his moment of hesitation or to stop his ramblings she handed him another one "An extra for you pretty boy you look like you need it." Indeed Reid hasn't been sleeping well these last few days. His eye bags must have grown larger.

Hotch poked his head through the door "wheels up in 20, I'll brief you all on the plane, time is of essence here" and he too grabbed a cookie off Garcia's tray before giving her a brief nod and appreciative smile, disappearing through the doorway once again. Her cookies are indeed too good to pass.

"That's strange, we usually discuss the case together here first," Reid commented.

"Must be real urgent," Morgan replied.

"Or he is sure the local authorities can benefit from our assistance," JJ added.

As they filed out of the conference room one by one to grab their ever-ready light luggage for their next trip, Morgan lingered behind just a bit longer so he could catch Reid alone. "Hey wassup kid, you alright?"

Reid tried to look surprised — he is surprised to some extent, and replied "yeah I'm fine" with a slight frown on his face, as though he is not sure why Morgan felt the need to ask.

"Well, you just look like you're swallowing acid every time you eat other people's food. It's just that" Morgan ended with a shrug. Reid did not expect Morgan to be so direct. Nor did he ever expect his pain to be so poorly veiled. Damn he cursed to himself.

"I'm fine" he tried again with more force this time and stormed past the older agent before he could say anything else.

Morgan, with his suspicions confirmed now by Reid's reactions, is more determined than ever to get to the root of the problem and help Reid through it. Whatever the it may be.

They solved the case within two days, one of the faster wrap-ups ever. And Hotch was right. They managed to save the Unsub's last victim just in time. One moment later and she would have been dead. The local authorities were grateful to the BAU to finally solve the case after months of hitting dead ends. They all got off duty happy and relieved that day.

Having functioned on less than 3 hours of sleep in total during the last two days, majority of the team took the flight home as a chance to catch up on some well deserved sleep.

Reid was reading as usual, sitting by himself at one of the window seats this time so that his reading light would not disturb his teammates, his family. Morgan sat opposite him with his headphones over his head. 30 minutes into the flight and Morgan noticed Reid's head slumping forward in regular slow motion. He smiled to himself that kid must be tired and got up to the pantry to fix himself a cup of coffee. There is no way he could fall asleep now and not see the dead mutilated bodies of the girls at the back of his eyelids. Better sleep at home where no one can hear his nightmares.

He walked past JJ sleeping on the long couch in fetal position and Emily with her head slumped backwards against the headrest, her mouth slightly open. Rossi's slow, even heaving of the chest indicates he is fast asleep as well. This case really exhausted every ounce of energy they had. Even Hotch had his eyes closed, but Morgan couldn't tell for certain if his respected unit chief is asleep.

He settled himself down opposite Reid once again as noiselessly as he could. Seeing that Reid didn't move a muscle, he relaxed and sipped his coffee. He likes his coffee black.

Morgan turned his gaze away from the night sky through the plane windows to Reid as he sensed the younger agent fidgeting. He didn't think much of it until Reid began whispering I'm sorry I'm sorry as his hands rushed up as though to protect his face. a nightmare. Morgan leaned forward hey hey you're safe it's just a nightmare. Reid's eyes flew open and they betrayed a deep deep sense of pain for just a millisecond before Reid tucked it away again. it was long enough for Morgan to notice. "What's wrong?"

Reid rubbed his eyes "nothing, just a bad dream. that's all" the moment he shrugged he realized he has overdone it, overdone trying to look nonchalant, and now he has his back to a wall — there is no way to dodge Morgan's questioning stare.

"Tell me" Morgan rearranged his micro expressions to look less angry and worried and more compassionate. Damn if only he could have Reid's sense of empathy, he thought to himself, he could have made Reid open up so much easier.

Reid turned and took a quick glance at the rest of the cabin, looks safe enough everyone's asleep. he sighed and told Morgan everything.

"When i was nine, this girl that I've always liked in class offered me one of her girl scout cookies when we were both waiting for the school bus." he swallowed. Shit. This is harder than he thought.

Morgan just waited patiently for him to continue, knowing that Reid would feel the need to fill up the silence soon, thereby divulging more information.

True enough Reid felt the silence to be suffocating and picked up where he left off, " my mother decided to be well enough to pick me up from school that day. And she totally flipped when she saw…"

"She got angry because you were eating a cookie?" Morgan finds it beyond him to grasp what is the issue here.

"Yeah… kind of… i guess." the usually eloquent Reid is at a loss for words. "Anyway, she got very angry and when we finally got to the privacy of our home, she…" he stopped, "well it is not her fault, she was taking a bunch of pills and i did a really bad thing" Reid is talking at a faster rate now, trying to justify what his mother did and rationalize the hurt she caused him.

"Wait wait hold on" Morgan held up his palm. "Eating other people's food is not wrong, not when it is not against their will" he can't believe how ridiculous it is to get angry over something so trivial, let alone not wrong, with someone so innocent and fragile. "But go on, you can tell me"

He must have sounded sincere — he is sincere. Because Reid told him everything, he talked like a dam broken

"She was never violent with me before but this time, this time she slapped me.. I was so shocked…I fell… I fell to the ground… and she started kicking me while yelling "You ungrateful bastard! Am I starving you? Am I a horrible incompetent mother? Like what everyone else says that I am? Like I'm such nutcase? I am supporting you all by myself because your father can't stand you! And this. Is. How. You. Treat. Me? Humiliating me like this? Now this will teach you never to eat other people's food again" it's reid's eidetic memory doing the talking now. "she… she couldn't stop." Reid dropped his head as a vacant look replaced the previous anger in his eyes. His lips trembled and his hands combed his hair fervently. Morgan's heart went out to his broken yet still kind and goes without speaking brilliant individual opposite him. "I was so scared" Reid's voice barely a whisper now. "And it hurt, not so much physically as it did…" he meant to say emotionally but he just can't talk anymore.

"Shhh, shhh, it's okay now. It's all okay now. She can't hurt you no more," Morgan tried to comfort Reid.

"NO." Reid raised his voice. Morgan must have looked alarmed. "No," Reid repeated again, in a lower voice this time, afraid he'll wake the others. "She can. And she is. Every time I close my eyes. Every time I am forced to eat other people's food because it is the polite thing to do. They taste like sand in my mouth and I feel like I can't breathe and am choking" his hands went up to his throat in an unconscious movement. "Although scientifically it is impossible for the throat to constrict that much…" Reid falls back to his wealth of scientific knowledge to justify and rationalize, just as he does every time when his heart can't handle the situation, his head steps in and takes it from there.

Reid lifted his eyes and looked at Morgan for the first time since he started telling the senior agent a secret he has told no one else. Morgan's face registered a mixture of shock, anger and sadness. "But I am okay now. I mean I wasn't hurt that bad last time. She didn't have a lot of strength in her, because of the meds, so she didn't kick too hard. And I can barely remember it, it was so long ago… " Morgan stopped himself just before stating the obvious – how can anyone with an eidetic memory forget? So he let Reid continue "… And she was on meds, so it probably wasn't even her doing it. She must have changed meds then. Things like that always happen when she change meds." strangely enough, it was Reid comforting Morgan. But all Morgan heard were three words.

"What do you mean by things like that?"


End file.
